Monday, March 27th, 2006

Black Postcards

Recieved a most exciting piece of email the other night from none other than Mr Dean Wareham, formerly of Luna. It seems that they’re assembling the artwork for Tell Me Do You Miss Me, the DVD documenting Luna’s farewell 2004/2005 tour, and they wanted to use one of my pics of Sean Eden from their Abbey Pub show in Chicago back in November ’04 for the booklet. I think it’s this one here, but there’s a few decent Sean ones they could have selected. Either way, it was pretty exciting to be getting my photo in the artwork and to correspond with Dean, if just for a little bit.

The trailer for the doc, which is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC next month before arriving on DVD in May, is also now online. I’m a little surprised by the direction that the film appears to take – rather than just a concert video collated from the farewell shows, there looks to be a fair bit of backstage and candid footage with a definite look at the business end of things that no doubt played a huge role in the band’s decision to call it quits. I’m a bit of a tough sell on concert filims in general, so this angle could make for a much more interesting viewing experience. Hope I get a copy as a thank-you for the photo… oh, and Rhino, who are releasing the DVD, are also putting out a best-of for Luna in May to coincinde with the film. No track listings yet, but if Rhino stays true to forml it’ll be an excellent mix of album tracks, b-sides and rarities.

And looking to the future, Dean & Britta have gone into the studio to record their second full-length album. Tony Visconti, who is again producing the duo, and on his website, he says “The latest batch of songs are, of course, romantic and heartfelt (and they make my eyes a little dewy — but it’s just a physiological thing, nothing to worry about)”. There’s some stuff to listen to on their MySpace page and The Squid & The Whale, which they provided the score to, came out on DVD last week.

Also retrospecitve-y and coming from Rhino in May (on the 23) – a Replacements best-of entitled Bastards Of Young which, unlike the feeble All For Nothing/Nothing For All set compilation from a few years back, should include selections from both the band’s Twin/Tone AND Warner Bros releases. And if that’s not enough ‘Mats for you, PunkNews has info on a box set being compliled for a future release. Via Clicky Click.

Sonic Youth’s final album for Geffen, Rather Ripped, will be out June 13. More info at Chart.

Pitchfork reports that The Mountain Goats will release a new EP, Babylon Springs, on April 3. Initially only available in Australia, it will hopefully get a North American release in some capacity before too long. And finally, the band have recorded their follow-up to The Sunset Tree and aim to release it this Fall.